Wednesday, June 20, 2012

In what is definitely some good news for the slowly rebounding housing market, luxury builder Toll Bros. and Shea Homes plan to build more than 2,000 homes and apartments on nearly 400 acres at Baker Ranch in Lake Forest in Orange County.
From the story:

Economists and analysts said the involvement of Pennsylvania-based Toll
Bros., the largest builder in the luxury niche, was an encouraging sign
for the market, jump-starting a long-planned development and infusing it
with some high-end cachet.

"It is the most promising news
announced since the bust, and since we have had this very slow
turnaround," said Patrick Duffy, principal of MetroIntelligence Real
Estate Advisors. "This is the first big announcement of this kind where
they are going after the upper-end buyer, so I think there is the
assumption that people are going to be able to sell their existing homes
and pull out their equity to move up."...

The renewed interest in large-scale development of homes in Orange
County means that builders are increasingly confident that the move-up
market for homes is beginning to recover, said Duffy of
MetroIntelligence Real Estate Advisors.

Much of the scarce development in Southern California since housing
tanked has been in the Inland Empire, where builders have focused on
small, affordable properties that can compete with foreclosures.

Home sales and prices overall in California have been improving this
spring, although few experts anticipate a return to the frenetic buying
and selling of the bubble years.